Social Mobility: Regional Attainment Gap
Lord Wills Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, we have recently announced the recruitment and retention strategy, and I agree with the noble Lord that retention is probably the greater priority, because it is a terrible waste when good young teachers leave the profession. We have put much more focus on ongoing CPD for teachers, particularly in the second year, reducing their teaching load so that they have more time for support. We have announced a £30 million investment in tailored support for certain schools with recruitment and retention challenges, which is designed to help schools improve existing plans, join national programmes, build local partnerships or fund new initiatives.
Lord Wills (Lab)
My Lords, what specific measures are the Government taking to increase the low number of care leavers going into higher education?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, in addition to the pupil premium we also have an enhanced pupil premium specifically aimed at that most vulnerable group. One of my personal missions has been to increase the opportunities for care leavers to attend boarding schools, where, according to a small study in Norfolk, their educational outcomes showed a dramatic improvement.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Wills Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Wills
“Whistleblowing arrangement in relation to looked after children and children at risk
The Secretary of State shall issue a code of practice on whistleblowing arrangements which can be taken into account by courts and tribunals when the issue of whistleblowing arises in public bodies providing social services and children’s services, and local authorities, in relation to looked after children and children at risk.”
Lord Wills
My Lords, as I said at Second Reading, the Bill is missing a crucial opportunity to introduce protections for the young people whom it is designed to support. These amendments would provide that opportunity. The importance of whistleblowing in exposing malpractice and wrongdoing and in improving the delivery of public services has been recognised by successive Governments for the past 20 years or so. The previous Labour Government brought in the Public Interest Disclosure Act and this Government have done more, insisting that they want to protect whistleblowers further. The current Prime Minister, for example, said:
“We will always back whistleblowers when they challenge poor standards, particularly in large organisations”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/2/14; col. 257.]
When he announced new plans for the takeover of poorly performing children’s services last year, he highlighted that one of the “sharper triggers” for this,
“could include complaints from whistle-blowers”.
But whistleblowers in local authorities still lack some crucial protections that will encourage them to make such disclosures in the public interest. These gaps in protection not only discourage individual cases of whistleblowing and damage individual whistleblowers, they inhibit the creation of an effective culture in organisations that encourages transparency. Over and over again we have seen the consequences—repeated failures in the National Health Service, police wrongdoing after the Hillsborough disaster, and the scandal of MPs’ expenses when the fees office was well aware of the scams that went on but never blew the whistle.
Large organisations that serve the public in both the public and private sectors are powerful institutions, often driven by a potent internal culture. Every case of whistleblowing challenges the powerful vested interests which so often run such organisations. As I have often said in debates on these issues, too often after a scandal has been revealed, abuses have been tackled and the guilty punished, and after all the fine words about whistleblowing have been spoken, it is all too easy for those dominant interests to revert to carrying on much as they did before. The powerful never like being challenged.
These amendments would provide extra protection for those working in public bodies providing social services or children’s services, and local authorities, in relation to looked-after children, children at risk and social workers in two ways. First, they would require the Secretary of State to issue a code of practice on whistleblowing arrangements that can be taken into account by courts and tribunals when the issue of whistleblowing arises. Secondly, they would provide protection against employment blacklisting of whistleblowers.
Amendments 127 and 137 would embed a code of practice into statute so that it would be taken into account by courts and tribunals. This was a key recommendation of the whistleblowing commission set up by the whistleblowing charity Public Concern at Work, chaired by the former Appeal Court judge Sir Anthony Hooper and whose members included the noble Lord, Lord Burns. The commission drafted a 15-point code of practice providing practical guidance to employers, workers and their representatives, and set out guidance for raising, handling, training and reviewing whistleblowing in the workplace. This could act as a model for these amendments. A statutory code of conduct sends out to all organisations a powerful signal about the importance that Parliament attaches to providing adequate protections for whistleblowers to help drive necessary cultural change within organisations to encourage responsible whistleblowing.
Amendments 128 and 138 would provide improved protection for whistleblowers who are job applicants. This is a critical gap in protection for whistleblowers. Unlike in other areas of discrimination law, job applicants are not considered workers under the Public Interest Disclosure Act, which provides protection where a worker secures a position and is then victimised, forced out or dismissed if the employer becomes aware of an instance of whistleblowing in a previous job role. If an individual is labelled a whistleblower, it can be very difficult for them to get work because they can find themselves blacklisted—not through a formal, centralised database but informally. The amendment would plug the loophole identified in the case of BP plc v Elstone where the Court of Appeal stated that the situation was created because the drafting of the Public Interest Disclosure Act had not considered the situation of a job applicant being victimised by raising concerns in a previous job.
Following the Francis report into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust, the Government finally recognised this anomaly and introduced new protections for whistleblowing job applicants—but they covered only the NHS. There is no logical reason why such protections should be so restricted. Actionable offences of sex and race discrimination are not restricted to the NHS, so why should discrimination against whistleblowers be?
The amendment addresses this anomaly for those working in public bodies, providing social services and children’s services, and local authorities, in relation to look-after children, children at risk and social workers. If the Bill is to realise its welcome objectives, it needs to encourage a culture of transparency among all those charged with delivering them. The amendments would help to do so, and I hope that the Minister will feel able to accept them.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, this of course brings back memories of the home for adults with learning disabilities that was so well documented on the “Panorama” programme a while ago. While I support the principles that the noble Lord has just laid out, I would point out that many people working in this area nowadays will be working for private businesses. Most children’s homes are in private hands and many foster care agencies are now private, so in that sector there may be well laid-out regulations regarding whistleblowers. Perhaps the Minister could write to us, or have further conversations, to reassure me, at least, that there are whistleblowing protections for those working in the private sector with vulnerable children.
Lord Wills
My Lords, I am very grateful to everyone who has taken part in this short debate and for the support I have had from all sides of the Committee. I am also very grateful to the noble Baroness. As she suspected, I am not particularly happy with the response; nevertheless, there were a few little glimmers of light, for which I am truly grateful.
I am baffled by the Government’s continued resistance to these points. I understand that it is not just a matter for the Department for Education; I have raised this issue on other occasions in relation to other departments. For some reason, the Government are digging in on this matter and I really do not understand why. I do not understand their resistance to a statutory code of conduct. As I said, it is important that it is placed in the Bill because that would send a very powerful signal to all these organisations that Parliament takes this issue very seriously. Guidance is all very well but, as we know, all too often in many spheres of public life it goes by the wayside in the face of all the other pressures on public organisations. A statutory code of conduct is qualitatively different and, frankly, I do not understand why the Government continue to resist it.
Nor do I understand why they are taking so long to rectify the anomaly in protecting job applicants. This was raised in previous debates and the Government dug in very resolutely, in the way that the noble Baroness has done, until the Francis report arrived. When that report said that many of the tragedies that took place in Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust could have been prevented if there had been a proper culture of whistleblowing, the Government immediately switched round and provided protection for NHS workers. I know that the noble Baroness is doing her best with the briefing that she has been given; nevertheless, she has still not produced any good reason why workers in the NHS should be protected, yet workers in equally sensitive and equally important areas of public service—all the areas covered by the Bill—are not. The signal that the Government are sending out, and I cannot understand why they want to go on doing so, is that somehow these matters are less important than the matters covered by the NHS. Clearly, that is not the case.
When the noble Baroness calls for evidence, almost by definition it will come only after a tragedy such as happened in Mid Staffordshire has occurred. I ask the question that I have asked other Ministers: do they really want to be on the record as denying an opportunity to put right this anomaly, only for some distinguished person at a public inquiry following a terrible tragedy—sadly, there almost certainly will be such a tragedy at some point in the future—to look at it all and say, “If only there had been a culture to encourage whistleblowing and transparency, we might have prevented some of these terrible circumstances”? Why do Ministers still resolutely turn their face against this?
The glimmers of light that the noble Baroness has produced today are a tiny, tiny step forward from the previous response that I have had from Ministers, so I am grateful for her commitment to continue to look at this issue. However, I urge her and all Ministers to take this more seriously and not to wait for another disaster and then to be forced into taking action, just as the Francis report forced the Government to take action after the Mid Staffordshire incident. Having said all that, I may try again in the future but, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
My Lords, I shall speak against Clause 15 and support the arguments of the noble Lords, Lord Watson, Lord Warner and Lord Ramsbotham. Clause 15 allows local authorities to be exempted from certain legal requirements and regulations and to test different ways of working. It is important, however, that they do not dilute accountabilities, fragment responsibilities and create a two-tier system of quality and standards. All vulnerable children deserve the same level of care.
Clause 15(3) says:
“The Secretary of State may make regulations under this section relating to a local authority in England only if asked to do so by that authority”.
My view is that it should not simply be at the whim of a local authority and that certain tests should need to be fulfilled to justify it, not least that the exemption should promote better outcomes and more efficient working. It should be clear that inadequate local authorities cannot be exempted from regulations that are crucial for upholding quality standards across the country. Clause 15(4) says:
“Regulations under this section may be made in relation to one or more local authorities in England”.
I seek assurance that the Secretary of State will not use the power under this clause to apply a request from one local authority seeking freedom under subsection (3) to apply it to more than one local authority under subsection (4).
In addition, I believe that statutory social work is best placed within local government, where there are established frameworks for oversight and monitoring. These clauses should not challenge the ultimate legal responsibility of local authorities to safeguard children. We need to avoid greater fragmentation of provision, any blurring and dilution of accountabilities, and any increased risk arising from more multiple hand-offs between disparate organisations. The experience of the NHS is salutary in this context: it is now imposing middle-tier planning arrangements to secure more effective joint working in a fragmented sector.
I am concerned that this clause could create an inconsistent national arena for the delivery of statutory social work duties, which could lead to confusion and a greater divide of practice. For children’s social work to run well, it has to uphold partnerships with a broad range of agencies: schools, police, health services—commissioners and providers—and the local voluntary sector. Local councils are best placed to perform that function.
I note that Scotland has required independent fostering arrangements to be not for profit; that approach could be explored in England. Recent research from Corporate Watch shows that in 2014-15, eight commercial fostering agencies made around £41 million profit between them from providing fostering placements to local authorities, at a time when local authorities have had to make significant budget reductions. Surely that profit could have been used to protect looked-after children.
Lord Wills
My Lords, I will not delay the Minister’s response very long. I want to say a few words in support of Amendment 131, to which I have added my name.
I recognise that there is widespread unease about Clause 15. All the noble Lords who have spoken so far have reflected that. The Minister will be aware that there is unease outside your Lordships’ House as well. I recognise that innovation can be crucial to the improvement of public services and I suspect, although I hope to be proved wrong, that the Government will not be unduly swayed by all the compelling arguments that we have heard against the clause. That is why Amendment 131 is important. Innovation, as other noble Lords have said, should not be at the expense of appropriate safeguards for those whom it is designed to help. Although I understand the Government’s intention—to promote new ways of working—as we have heard over and over again, as currently drafted the Bill does not offer adequate protections for those young people against failures in innovation. Amendment 131 aims to help to do so by placing a duty on the Secretary of State to,
“consult children in care, those representing children in care, and care leavers in their area before making a decision to grant an exemption or make modifications under subsection (2)”.
Innovation may be positive from the perspective of the local authority but it will not necessarily be positive from that of the young people affected by it. Children in care and care leavers have been let down by the system for so long that they have earned the right to have their views heard about changes to it. If any changes are to be successful, it is crucial that they are heard. These young people know better than anyone how the system works for them. That is one good reason why Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates that, when adults make decisions affecting children, children have the right for their opinions to be taken into account.
The amendment also provides for new, independent scrutiny arrangements and a duty on both the local authority and the Secretary of State to consult children in care and care leavers when a local authority applies for an exemption from the requirements of social care legislation. At Second Reading, the Minister was reassuring about scrutiny arrangements, but I ask him to consider carefully the merits of a new, independent body. Existing organisations all come with their existing viewpoints, cultures and histories—in other words, they come with baggage. The proposed change in Clause 15 is potentially so radical and could have such a dramatic effect on the lives of young people, who already face such huge challenges, that I believe it is important that any organisation scrutinising such arrangements should be dedicated to doing so. It should be able to adopt fresh perspectives and develop specific expertise, which a new scrutiny organisation will be able to do in a way that existing organisations may well not. From his response at Second Reading, I suspect that the Minister is not minded to do this but I hope that he is open to persuasion on that point.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, I want to ask a very specific question. Could an exemption of the kind envisaged in the amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, occur under Clause 15?
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Wills Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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The Earl of Listowel
I will speak to Amendment 47 in this group. Many noble Lords will recognise that adolescence is a difficult time for many young people. Anna Freud, the founder of the Anna Freud Institute, wrote three times on adolescence. Her final paper was entitled Adolescence as a Developmental Disturbance. Adolescence—the transition from childhood to adulthood—can often be a difficult time, but if one is a child in care, has experienced trauma before entering care and then may well have experienced further trauma on entering care—the process of being taken into care is traumatic in itself—one may find oneself with a protracted adolescence. Anna Freud describes the process of adolescence as the detachment of a child from their parent and the gradual process of moving to become an independent adult individual. I paraphrase, but that is roughly how she would describe adolescence.
The important thing to keep in mind here is that adolescence is about the detachment from the parent. The child has a close attachment to the parent; adolescence sunders that relationship. When we talk about continuing support of such young people up to the age of 25 by local authorities, it is very important to recognise that the developmental drive for those young people is to push themselves away from their corporate parent, the local authority, particularly because of their early experience. Just like any other good parent, the corporate parent, the local authority, has to make very clear to their child or young person: “We are here for you. You may not like us—you may hate us or despise us; that is normal for adolescents—but we are still here for you, we still care for you and we still want to see you and support you. We are here for you when you need us”. That is what I hope the amendment covers. It puts more of an onus than the Bill currently does on local authorities to say to those young people: “We want to support you. This is the offer we have for you”, and, for instance, to send Christmas cards and postcards, to do everything in their power to keep in touch and to treat them, in this regard, just as they would younger people aged under 21.
I recall Ashley Williamson, a care leaver I have known for a while. He did not get back into contact with his personal adviser until he was perhaps 20. He was just on the edge of losing the right to a personal adviser, but very fortunately he got back in contact. It made a huge difference to his life, because he and his personal adviser clicked. She supported him to get stable housing for himself. Following that, his life improved and he became a very effective lobbyist in Parliament, coming to parliamentary groups to talk about what needs to be done for care leavers and expressing concerns about the sexual abuse and exploitation of young people in care.
We have heard eloquent words about the treatment of young mothers, in particular, coming out of care. I remind your Lordships that young people and teenagers in care are far more likely to become pregnant than those in the general population. Very sadly, the number of children taken away from young people who have grown up in care is also far higher as a proportion than in the general population. If anything can be done to ensure that the financial environment for those families is as beneficial and supportive as possible, that would be a very good thing, as I hope your Lordships will agree. We need to do all we can to support these families. We know from the statistics that they are highly vulnerable, so the measures described here are very welcome and I hope the Minister can give a positive response.
Lord Wills (Lab)
My Lords, briefly, I support Amendment 74A, to which I have added my name. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my entry in the register of interests about my involvement in a voluntary project for care leavers. I support everything that my noble friend said in support of this group of amendments. As she suggested, I want to put forward a set of arguments in favour of Amendment 74A, which is about the need to acquire better data about outcomes for care leavers.
As I said at Second Reading, delivering the Bill’s undoubted good intentions will be challenging. In particular, it is crucial that the individual circumstances of each young person must be considered if real progress is to be made. As the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said, these young people face all the challenges that all young people face, but the particular challenges from their specific circumstances are especially demanding. Therefore, their problems are unusually difficult and complex and they require tailored help to meet them. If we are to do so, we must overcome all the problems that public services have traditionally found in personalising delivery to the individual.
Adequate data on outcomes will be crucial if we are to use the Bill’s framework to devise effective strategies, but it is simply unavailable at the moment. For example, as I said at Second Reading, it is known that 5% of care leavers are in higher education at the age of 19; we do not know how many of those will graduate; nor do we know how many care leavers enter higher education in later life, although we know that many of them do so when they feel more ready to take advantage of that opportunity. Such data will be crucial if we are to assess the effectiveness of support for those young people. Requiring local authorities to keep in touch with their care leavers until they are at least 25 will, among all its other virtues, enable better data to be compiled about outcomes for them, which is a vital building block for the success of the Bill in the long term. For that reason, and for all the others that we have already heard, I hope the Government will consider the amendment sympathetically.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, I have listened carefully to the strong case made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, for the amendments and agree with much, if not all, of what she said. I repeat, however, that they would place additional duties, and therefore inevitably extra costs, on local authorities. That must be recognised. Can the Minister give the Committee before the end of this stage an estimate of the additional costs imposed on local authorities by the Bill? In response to my earlier point, the Minister claimed that I was asking for additional funding. Actually, I was making a plea for cuts not to be made. A 25% cut in children’s services spending is bound to have a significant impact on what local authorities can do for children in care and care leavers. I make a plea for having not so large a cut in local government funding.
Lord Wills
The noble Baroness will understand how sympathetic I am, sitting on this side of the Committee. We have now officially ditched austerity as part of the Tory leadership campaign, so circumstances are clearly different. However, I am also conscious that we are living in very difficult times and there is not likely to be much more money. She makes understandable pleas, but does she accept that a lot of this funding will prevent spending being incurred later? If we cannot support those most vulnerable young people at the most difficult times of their lives, they will run into problems and, sooner or later, that will involve more spending by the state when it would be tragic to have to do so. When she pleads for funding, I ask her to accept that this funding has a prophylactic effect, so the extra demand on resources may not be as severe as she suggests.
Baroness Pinnock
When I spoke at Second Reading, I made a plea for the Government to consider shifting money to early intervention and prevention so that we would not have to address issues of looked-after children and care leavers. The idea would be to put effort and funding into family support at an early stage so that children can remain safely with their families and not have to enter the care system. That would be the best outcome for the child and for the state, which is funding children in care. The thrust of my argument is that this is all focused on looked-after children and care leavers. I urge the Government to put the focus on family intervention and prevention of family issues that lead to children going into the care system. The difficulty with that is that we know across the country that children’s centres, which are the focus for early intervention and prevention, are closing. Only at the end of last week, Hampshire County Council made a decision to close all but 11 of its 53 children’s centres. That is the thrust of my argument. I would much rather that we did not have to debate support for care leavers because we had prevented all those children going into care.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I shall speak to the group that includes Amendments 41, 43, 45, 47, 51, retabled as Amendment 74A, Amendment 54 and the proposed new clause in Amendment 98A. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken to them. All these amendments are concerned with the continuing support that care leavers receive.
First, I address Amendments 41, 43 and 45. Clause 2 requires local authorities to publish information about the services that they offer to care leavers, based on an understanding of their individual needs, as well as other services that they offer to help care leavers to prepare for adulthood. In preparing those local offers, local authorities must consult care leavers and relevant representative groups of care leavers, including children in care councils.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, talked about what the local offer should cover. The clause already includes a duty to publish information about services relating to health and well-being, education and training, employment, accommodation and participation in society. That is a non-exclusive list; the local authority may include other matters as it sees fit. Given the work that local authorities will already be undertaking, an additional requirement to assess the services required to meet the needs of care leavers would be overly prescriptive. Rather, these matters will be detailed in the guidance that my department will produce to inform the practical application of the corporate parenting principles, to which I have already referred several times during this debate.
With regard to the national minimum standard proposed in these amendments, the Government’s intention in legislating for the local offer is to raise the bar for services provided to care leavers. We want local authorities to aim much higher than a minimum standard when it comes to what they offer. We want to enable comparisons of the offer between local authorities so that there is upward pressure for them to do more. Ultimately, Ofsted will be the arbiters of how good a local offer is.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, referred to New Belongings. We eagerly await the evaluation results of the New Belongings programme at its dissemination event this Friday. That will inform our thinking. The care leavers strategy will support programmes that empower care leavers to drive change locally, such as New Belongings. I will come back to the noble Baroness on the care leavers fora and the other points that she made. In light of this, I hope noble Lords are sufficiently reassured not to move their amendments.
I now address Amendments 47, 51—retabled as Amendment 74A—and 54, which all concern the support that care leavers receive up to the age of 25. No care leaver will be left to fend for themselves when they reach 21. Through Clause 3, a care leaver aged up to 25 will know of their right to request support, including access to a personal adviser. If a particular service provided under the local offer is appropriate and meets a particular need, of course the young person should be able to access it. That is the purpose of the local offer, and personal advisers are responsible for identifying and co-ordinating the provision of services for the care leaver.
However, mandating a personal adviser for every care leaver, regardless of their wishes, and a requirement to provide such services would be disproportionate. To do so raises several obvious practical issues. Some care leavers want independence at the earliest opportunity and to sever any ties with their corporate parent. Some move away from the area and become hard to trace. Even those still known to the local authority will be in very different circumstances, with different needs and aspirations. Some will value the help of a personal adviser and some will look for guidance and support elsewhere, as my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook said. Often, this will reflect how well the relationship with the personal adviser has worked, how helpful they have been or might be, and their relationships with others.
If we were to impose the support of a personal adviser on every care leaver, there is a real risk that that would divert support from care-leaving teams away from those who really need it. Rather than impose a personal adviser service, it is better to make the personal adviser service optional for those who want it so that resources can be effectively targeted—as is done successfully in Trafford. However, we want to make sure that all those who want the support of a personal adviser can access it.
There are two important issues here. The first is whether and how care leavers are made aware of the offer of support from a personal adviser. I suggest that the obvious place for that is the local offer. The second is whether a care leaver who has lost contact with their personal adviser should be able to resume this if and when they feel the need to do so at a later date. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, referred to an example of this. I can certainly confirm that that would be possible through the existing legislation and Clause 3 for care leavers up to the age of 25. The guidance we are producing will encourage local authorities to carry out this new entitlement clearly, proactively and positively so that care leavers are encouraged to take it up.
We need to set an expectation that local authorities should attempt to remind care leavers of their entitlement to this support so that a young person refusing support at age 22 does not feel that they should be barred from accessing it later. I accept that this is an important point. I should like to reflect further on this in discussion with local authorities and over the next few months before we return on Report.
Lord Wills
I understand the force of what the Minister is saying and the Committee will be grateful for his offer to keep looking at these points. Could he also take into account my point about data and the importance of keeping some sort of better check on what happens at least until the age of 25? What he has said so far does not really address that point. Perhaps he could reflect on that and come back to us either with a letter or on Report.
Lord Wills
Lord Wills
My Lords, all the amendments in my name in this group aim to fulfil the ambitions of the Bill by extending support for care leavers. The reasons for most of them were extensively debated at Second Reading, when widespread concern was expressed about the onus being placed on young people to request a personal adviser, and I do not intend to rehearse those arguments now. They seem self-evident. If the Bill is to deliver on its objective of better support for care leavers, the duties under Clause 3 should not be dependent in this way. In response to those concerns, the Minister said at Second Reading:
“This is an extremely good point which I would like to go away and reflect on”.—[Official Report, 14/6/16; col. 1204.]
I hope that he has now done so and will feel able to accept these amendments, which address that point.
I also speak briefly to Amendments 60, 72 and 74 in my name. Amendment 60 provides that all care leavers with a personal adviser should have a full needs assessment to ensure that they receive all the support they need. A young person may seek help from their local authority for a small problem, which can easily be resolved, but may also have more complex problems that only a full needs assessment will identify, so it is important that their needs continue to be monitored throughout their pathway plan and they retain their personal adviser even if the care leaver is referred to external services for their needs to be met. The amendment would secure that.
Amendment 72 is a probing amendment. As the role of the personal adviser is so critical to the content of Part 1—we have already heard noble Lords discuss this at some length and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, earlier talked about the need for them to deliver services of an appropriately professional standard—it is clearly important that there should be clarity about what exactly that role is. The amendment is designed to encourage the Government to make clear whether they have any plans to change the role of the personal adviser and, if so, what they might be.
Finally, Amendment 74 would extend the duty on virtual school heads to care leavers. The creation of this role is a potentially valuable innovation, but those who have left care before their 18th birthday are not covered. Moreover, the role excludes a focus on care leavers over the age of 18, while local authorities have continuing duties to support care leavers in education up to the age of 25. There is clearly a need for better joint working between local authorities and further and higher education providers. The amendment would extend the role to cover further education and higher education providers. I hope that the Government will look sympathetically on all those amendments.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, the Bill as drafted places responsibility on the young person to request advice and support. No one in this Room or reading the Bill would be in any doubt that we are talking about vulnerable young people, so the question has to be asked: what support will be offered so that young people know about all their entitlements; and what systems will be in place to help a child make that request, remembering that many of these children will have literacy difficulties? It is one thing for a young person to turn down advice and support that they have been offered. There are two ways of looking at that if it happens. One is that that the individual does not lack a certain amount of confidence, which is a good thing. The other is that they may not have thought the thing through or may lack the requisite amount of common sense, turning away from what is clearly valuable and important information.
Confidence is a big issue for many children who are leaving—or young people who have recently left—care. That lack of confidence is simply because of their life experiences up to that point. They are moving into a world of their own, taking many important steps in a way not experienced by children fortunate enough to live within a family, who have that family as a safety net after they have left home, should things not go entirely to plan. A young person leaving care may not have been informed that they can ask for advice and support. Even if they have been informed and have had that support, it could depend on how that was done. The young person may not always grasp what is available to them.
The question must be asked: why take that risk? Why leave it up to the young person? Much better surely that the duty falls directly on the local authority, not the person himself or herself. We have to have a sense, as we debate issues like this, that we have a duty of care in terms of framing legislation that affords the maximum amount of support to young people. I think Amendments 52 and 53, to which I am speaking at the moment, do that. I mentioned earlier—as did the Minister—that his department has today published the policy paper entitled, Putting Children First: Our Vision for Children’s Social Care. If that means anything at all, I suggest the Minister should live up to it by accepting Amendments 52 and 53 and making sure that the onus is firmly on the local authority to be proactive rather than reactive.
Lord Wills
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to everyone who has taken part in what I thought was a useful short discussion on all the amendments. On the one which has taken up the most time, the question of reversing the onus of requesting continuation of support in this way, I will read and reflect carefully on what the Minister said. I understand that the Bill is full of good intentions and I know that he is personally. I worry, however, that, as other noble Lords have said much more powerfully than I, we are still placing an unrealistic burden on very vulnerable young people who do not suddenly stop being vulnerable when they pass a particular age. At least until 25, many of them will be in very difficult circumstances and not all of them will be capable of making these informed, rational decisions, as the Minister said, however accurately informed they are of their entitlements. I will look at the Hansard record of what he said, but, given the widespread support for a change to this part of the Bill, we may return to it at Report.
My only other comment is about the role of the virtual school head. I thought I heard the Minister say that in many cases, they do not just turn a blind eye but go on being involved. That is precisely the point: it is in many cases, not necessarily in all. Again, I am not altogether reassured by what he said but will read what he said in Hansard and reflect, but we may return to it on Report. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I very much appreciated the 1992 report of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, Choosing with Care. I have referred to it many times during my career in this House. I find it extremely helpful and illuminating, and in visiting children’s homes, I know how helpful they have found it. There is even something called the Warner interview in which they are instructed to look back over the CV of the applicant to see if there are ever any gaps and probe the applicant on what they were doing in those gaps. It was very influential and important.
I also emphasise what noble Lords have said about the first line manager or supervisor. Recently at a conference, I heard from the chief executive of Frontline, which trains social workers. He produced evidence that where there was an excellent supervisor and manager, even in a poorly functioning local authority, newly qualified social workers could do well and be resilient. Dame Claire Tickell was commissioned to produce a White Paper for social work and she emphasised the need to train first line managers strongly. I welcome what the Minister has said so far about how he sees the Government helping to develop this personal adviser role. I hope that he will also look at their supervision and their first line managers and how those need to be developed.
Finally, on the issue of flexibility versus rigidity, there are strengths to both sides of the argument. I hope that we can find a marriage between the two. My concern is that there are huge burdens on local authorities’ resources at the moment, and unless one is very specific in terms of the personal adviser profession, we may find huge disparity in quality and that our young people may not get delivery of what they need. At the same time, there needs to be flexibility where someone knows that young person and they have a relationship. We want continuity of relationships and we want foster carers, teachers or friends to be supported to be able to deliver that. We want to allow that role to be given to the foster carer or whoever. This issue is complex. This is a helpful debate and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Wills
My Lords, as we have heard, this is a complex and difficult issue. I have huge sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, the right reverend Prelate, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said about the need for flexibility. These young people are very vulnerable. They have a wide range of needs and they will respond differently to different people. It is not a question of having one professional group that will deal with every young person in the same way. We must be very careful about this because everything that I have learned about this complex subject suggests that one of the most crucial things is stability in the lives of these young people. The more difficult and restricting we make the area in which we can recruit these personal advisers, the more difficult it will be to provide stability, so there is clearly a huge problem here.
Having said that, we should not let all those difficulties dissuade or deflect us from the fundamental importance of what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has said. There is always a temptation in government—I remember it very well from all my years as the Minister—that when things come complicated and difficult, particularly in such sensitive areas, to push it aside, kick it down the road a little bit and have a review which, in the circumstances, will not necessarily produce anything very valuable. We have heard the experience of all those people with a lot more experience than I have in these matters of how these problems come to light only after the damage has been done.
I urge the Minister to grapple with those difficulties, not lose sight of the importance of what the noble Lord, Lord Warner said, and to produce a substantive response today.
Lord Nash
I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for his amendment and the points that he, the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the noble Lord, Lord Wills, made about the importance of safeguarding young people from predatory adults and the qualifications, training and management of personal advisers. These are of crucial and, in the case of safeguarding, paramount importance, and I will ensure that these points are covered in our review of personal advisers, to which I have already referred in some detail. This will inform what we say on Report, although I recognise the points made by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Wills, about flexibility and stability and will look at the worrying delays to which the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, referred in relation to vetting.
I hope that the noble Lord will accept that I do not want to prejudge the outcome of our review by accepting his amendment now, and I hope that he will therefore consent to withdraw it, but I assure him that I recognise the importance of the points he makes.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Wills Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Wills (Lab)
My Lords, there are many reasons to be concerned by the content of the gracious Address this year but this Bill is not one of them. The Minister set out a compelling case for why it is necessary and important, and I join all noble Lords who have already spoken in welcoming its intention to improve the position of the most vulnerable young people in our society. I will focus my remarks on the parts of the Bill that concern looked-after children and care leavers. In doing so, I draw your Lordships’ attention to my entry in the register of interests.
The Bill’s intentions may be good but delivering on them will be more difficult. New standards for local authorities are an important start, but no more than that. The individual circumstances of each young person must be considered if real progress is to be made. It is significant whether a child is taken into care when they are three years old or 11 years old, and whether they are taken into care because their parents have died or because they have been abused or neglected. Devising the support that is needed will therefore require a high degree of personalisation to the individual, and public services have historically found this difficult to deliver. The instructive remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, on personal advisers, indicated the practical challenges of doing this. There is a lengthy, comprehensive and excellent document, Principles of Care, produced by the Who Cares? Trust, a leading charity in this field, which further demonstrates the extent of the challenges. I recommend it to all who have not yet read it.
Adequate data on outcomes will be crucial in devising effective strategies, and that is simply not there at the moment. For example, it is known that 5% of care leavers are in higher education at the age of 19, but we do not know how many of those go on to graduate; nor do we know how many care leavers enter higher education later in life. Yet these data are important if we are to assess the effectiveness of support for these young people. So I hope the Minister can reassure your Lordships’ House that renewed efforts will be made in this area—for example, by requiring local authorities to keep in touch with their care leavers until they are at least 25, so that better data can be compiled about their outcomes. While the aim of extending support to the age of 25 is very welcome and long overdue, as others have said, it must be adequately funded, and I hope that the Minister can reassure your Lordships about this.
In many areas, the Government could be more ambitious in their aims for children in care and care leavers. For example, as my noble friend Lady Hughes said, the Bill should not require a young person to request a personal adviser—rather, the onus should be on the local authority to provide one. All care leavers with a personal adviser should have a full needs assessment to ensure that they receive all the support they need. A young person may seek help from their local authority for a small problem, which can easily be resolved, but may also have more complex problems that only a full needs assessment will identify.
Innovation can be crucial to the improvement of public service delivery, but it should not be at the expense of appropriate safeguards for those it is designed to help. While I understand the Government’s intentions in promoting new ways of working, as currently drafted the Bill does not offer adequate protections for those young people against failures in innovation. I recognise what the Minister said in his opening remarks and very much welcome it, but I hope that he will look further at this and, for example, be prepared to introduce new protections, such as new scrutiny arrangements that are fully independent and transparent, as well as perhaps a duty on both the local authority and Secretary of State to consult children in care and care leavers when a local authority applies for an exemption from the requirements of social care legislation.
The Bill is missing an opportunity to introduce one crucial protection that could act as an insurance against innovation and service delivery failing the young people they are designed to help. When the Prime Minister announced at the end of last year new plans for the takeover of poorly performing children’s services, he highlighted that one of the “sharper triggers” for this,
“could include complaints from whistle-blowers”.
Quite so. But whistleblowers in local authorities still lack some crucial protections that could encourage them to make such public interest disclosures. For example, during the passage of the small business Bill and the Enterprise Bill, I repeatedly urged Ministers to extend whistleblowing protection towards job applicants—protection against the informal blacklisting of whistleblowers. The Government eventually recognised the need to do this, but only in respect of workers in the National Health Service. This was welcome and it has now been put on the statute book, but they so far refuse to implement such protections for anyone else. I hope the Minister will take that thought away and take this rare legislative opportunity to extend such whistleblowing protections to those working in local authorities in general and children’s services in particular. These protections and the encouragement they will give to whistleblowers could be critically important in delivering the Minister’s stated aim during the debate on the gracious Speech of promoting,
“more effective learning at national level from incidences of serious harm”.
I want to express my concerns, following others, about the Bill’s reliance on secondary legislation. It is easy to understand why Governments do this—I have been a Minister and, I am afraid, did it myself on several occasions—and everyone recognises the disruption to government business caused by the EU referendum. However, none of this is ever an excuse. As many noble Lords on all sides of the House have pointed out repeatedly in recent months, it denies Parliament the opportunity for proper scrutiny and the improvement of legislation. I support the remarks of my noble friend on the Front Bench and those of the noble Lord, Lord Lang, just now.
I am sure that the Minister will have noticed the good will towards this Bill from all sides of the House and a desire to work with the Government to ensure that this important Bill is as good as it possibly can be. He will have gathered from all the speeches preceding mine and the distinguished list of speakers following me that a great range of wisdom and experience is available to him in doing this, in this House. But your Lordships’ House can do this job only if the Government do their job by providing full details of legislation in a timely manner. I hope the Minister will make good on his commitment to put as much information as possible before your Lordships’ House so that this legislation can be adequately scrutinised and improved were necessary. Despite these caveats, I welcome the Bill and am sure that it will have a successful passage through the House.
Education: British Values
Lord Wills Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Wills (Lab)
My Lords,
“There is something rather unBritish about seeking to define Britishness”.
Not my words, but those of the Secretary of State for Education when he was merely Michael Gove MP in 2007. But that was then. Now academies have to demonstrate fundamental values which the Department for Education has helpfully defined for them. I welcome that change of heart.
I was part of the previous Government, who sought to encourage a vibrant sense of national identity through promoting British values in exactly the sort of way that I was delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, just espouse. The profound changes we are living through—great global migrations of people and capital; social, cultural and economic flux—inevitably create pressures on identity, our sense of ourselves and our sense of belonging. We thought it was important to encourage a dialogue about our national identity primarily because it is so important to many people. If there was no national process to discuss it in ways that included everyone on these islands, it would leave a vacuum, and into that vacuum could well flood sectarian and even poisonous views. We believed it was important to do everything we could to encourage cohesion and assert what binds us together rather than what divides us, and we believed that a cohesive and inclusive national identity is rooted in the values we hold dear.
But values on their own are abstract. Every modern democracy will espouse the values articulated by the Department for Education’s recent ruling: democracy, respect for the rule of law, equality and tolerance. What roots our identity in these values is the way they are mediated through our institutions and history, and their expression in this way can be contested. Different people will interpret that history and what it says about our values differently. Our institutions evolve and how they evolve reflects the way those values inform a changing society. So we believed that the articulation of British values had to be driven by the British people themselves. We started a deliberative process involving representative groups of people across Britain to discuss the issues of values, identity and belonging. This process was paused in 2010 and I regret that it has not been recommenced by the coalition Government.
They have now discovered the merits of fostering British values, but they have adopted what I think is a mistaken way of doing so. Instead of an evolving, inclusive discussion that is driven by the British people, the Government have suddenly produced the sort of top-down formulation that the Prime Minister used to oppose when he was in opposition. In 2009 he said:
“Britishness ... grows and evolves from the bottom up. It can never be defined by one motto or one politician”.
I agreed then and I agree now, but instead of such a bottom-up formulation of Britishness, there has been a panicky fiat from the top which has been rushed out apparently to deflect attention from an emotionally incontinent spat between the Department for Education and the Home Office.
What consultation has there been about these values? Are these fundamental British values as set out in the model funding agreement meant to be exclusive of others or can others such as justice, fair play and freedom of expression be added in? The Whip is looking anxious, so I will come to an end very shortly. What is going to be the test for whether the stipulated British values are being promoted effectively? What are the Government going to do to ensure that this initiative is an inclusive one and does not alienate and exclude sections of our society? I hope that the Minister can reassure your Lordships’ House that his department can answer these basic questions.
This has been a sadly inadequate way to approach an issue of such importance in our national life. I hope that this debate, on which the noble Lord, Lord Storey, is to be congratulated, might prompt the Government to do better in the months ahead to promote a constructive and inclusive debate about the values that bind our country together.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I would like to thank my noble friend Lord Storey for securing this important debate. I would also like to thank other noble Lords for their valuable contributions.
On 15 June, to mark the anniversary of Magna Carta, the Prime Minister wrote about these values. He described their roots in our most vital institutions: our parliamentary democracy, our free press, our justice system and our many church and faith groups. The Prime Minister highlighted the important role these institutions play in helping to enforce British values.
Another great British institution is our school system. We have a long and proud commitment to provide access to schooling, regardless of one’s background. Our schools have always recognised that promoting and embedding good values is essential to delivering high-quality education. We should celebrate the excellent work done by many of our schools. We must also recognise and respond to the public’s demand for greater assurance and higher standards in every school, whether independent or academy, free school or maintained. The Government are determined to put the promotion of British values at the core of what every school has to deliver for its pupils. I welcome the opportunity to close this debate and to set out how we intend to achieve this.
I will also describe the requirements and accountability measures already in place. It is important to recognise that these are not measures invented anew but are relevant to the work started in 2011, when the Prevent programme introduced our description of British values. Independent schools and academies and free schools must adhere to the independent school standards. Critically, the standards refer to the expected values and ethos of the school as assessed according to its offer of spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
On Monday, 23 June, we launched a consultation on the wording of the independent school standards that will actively require schools to promote principles that encourage fundamental British values. I hope that all noble Lords who are interested, including the noble Lord, Lord Wills, will respond to this consultation. We are also proposing a new requirement that teaching and curriculum practice must not undermine these values, and we will be consulting on this.
Lord Wills
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, but I think the question of consultation is fundamental, and I wonder whether he could tell your Lordships’ House what consideration the Government have given to deliberative processes involving the British people themselves in this consultation rather than waiting for the usual sources to send in the usual things to a government consultation.
Lord Nash
The whole principle of consultation is that it is deliberative and that people will respond. I hope they do. As I said, it is not being rushed out, as the noble Lord implied. British values have been part of the policy framework since 2011, when they were introduced as part of the Prevent strategy. Since 2013 standards have required schools to encourage pupils to respect the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs. The words are “mutual respect and tolerance”, not just “tolerance”. The noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, made this point and I will certainly take it back. It is important that our advice to schools is clear. To promote ideas or systems of thought at odds with these values would be failing to meet the standard.
These requirements provide a sufficient lever for action in cases where an attempt is made to undermine British values. The new title wording suggested in the consultation will do more to challenge rigorously those schools paying lip service to these duties. We will expect these changes to come into effect from September this year. They will apply to all independent schools, academies and free schools. We must secure the same standards in maintained schools. As with the independent sector, we are building on responsibilities schools already have to fulfil. Maintained schools must promote the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of their pupils so that they are able to participate positively in society. They cannot promote partisan political activities and must present balanced views to pupils. Importantly, they must promote community cohesion.
Under the citizenship curriculum, maintained schools are also required to teach pupils about a range of subjects, including democracy, human rights, diversity, and the need for mutual respect and understanding. I heard what my noble friend Lord Storey said about the vital importance of citizenship. As important, if not more important, for getting a real grasp of British values is to study history, in order to understand what Daniel Defoe was on about in the quote that was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, and to understand, for instance, that we are an island made up of a number of countries with a long history stretching back over several millennia of immigration.
While academies and free schools are not, as my noble friend Lord Storey said, subject to the same curriculum requirements as maintained schools, the trust running the school must deliver a broad and balanced curriculum and will be bound by the legal requirement to actively promote fundamental British values. As I trust noble Lords will acknowledge from the published coverage of the Birmingham academies placed into special measures, the Secretary of State will not hesitate to use his powers to consider terminating a funding agreement with an academy trust that cannot secure the required improvements.
Inspection is the primary means by which individual schools are held to account. Noble Lords will note that academies and free schools are inspected under the same section 5 framework as maintained schools. I know that noble Lords will be pleased to hear that 24% of free schools inspected have been adjudged to be outstanding—which, contrary to what reports suggested, represents a remarkable success, particularly as those schools were inspected after only four or five terms.
Spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is already part of section 5, but it allows inspectors to challenge only the most serious failures. Inspectors are already advised to look for evidence of pupils having the skills to participate in modern Britain, to understand and appreciate a range of different cultures, and to respect diversity. We will look to improve the consistency with which this is applied.
Now is the time to raise the bar so that all maintained schools, academies and free schools share the same goal of promoting British values. That is why, as the Secretary of State confirmed on 9 June, the department will review its own guidance to schools so that they are clear about our expectations. We are already talking to Ofsted to ensure that those same expectations are reflected in section 5 arrangements.
On what my noble friend Lord Storey said about grade 1 schools being exempt from inspection, they are not exempt and will be inspected if there are areas of concern; for example, if their results suffer or if there are particular complaints.
My noble friend Lord Cormack talked about a citizenship ceremony. I am sure that the events of Birmingham will enable us all to reflect on what more we can do to produce a more coherent and integrated society. On flying flags on schools, I am always pleased to see the flag so prominent when I visit America. It is sad that, if I were to put a union jack outside my own house, people would think that I was a member of the British National Party, and that the only time one sees flags is when a football match is on. It is also sad that very few students in our primary schools could describe the make-up of the union jack beyond the cross of St George.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Sheikh that education should be a tool of integration. We will not be able to call ourselves a truly successful society until we have a much more integrated society—and, sadly, we are some way short of that.
The noble Lord, Lord Stone, talked about mindfulness. I thank him for his insightful and interesting comments, and for his commercial for the mindfulness classes. The values that we are asking all schools to actively promote are not exclusive. As I understand it, mindfulness chimes a very loud chord with me. I believe that children and young people should be taught about concepts such as mindfulness. Such concepts can be very powerful, particularly for children from scattered home lives. We use a similar approach with a number of our more challenged pupils at my own secondary academy.
The noble Baroness, Lady Flather, made some powerful points. Of course, it is for all schools to ensure that the sort of beliefs to which she referred have no place in our society.
My noble friend Lord Lexden made some supportive comments, for which I am grateful. He knows how highly I value co-operation between the independent and state sectors.
I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady King, to the Dispatch Box for the first time. I agree with her on the importance of sharing by example, but she should not underestimate the seriousness of the events in Birmingham, about which I obviously know a great deal more than other noble Lords, and their wider implications. She should also be aware that both the free schools programme and the academies programme are proving great successes. Academies are performing much more strongly than other maintained schools.
The noble Baroness referred to Labour’s proposals for 50 regional bureaucracies. We believe that breaking the country into eight regional schools commissioner areas is appropriate. I note that there seems now to be a consensus that we should not go back to local authority control—even Ed Miliband said that in the other place only a few days ago—but creating 50 bureaucracies, each with its own staff, would effectively take us back to a local authority-controlled system.
Schools: Careers Service
Lord Wills Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Wills (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that Barnardo’s has estimated that 65% of the children of prisoners end up in prisons themselves. What specific measures are the Government taking to support this particularly at-risk group in making the difficult transition from education into the workplace?
Schools: Well-being and Personal and Social Needs
Lord Wills Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Wills
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Jones on giving your Lordships the opportunity to discuss some of the fundamental challenges facing our education system. I hope there will be general agreement on the proposition that schools can make an invaluable contribution to the well-being and personal and social needs of young people. I hope that there will also be general agreement that, as my noble friend said, the introduction by the previous Government of personal, social, health and economic education was a valuable addition to the curriculum. Therefore, the outcome of the Government’s review, when it finally emerges, will be important. Judging from what the Schools Minister, Mr Nick Gibb MP, said last year when announcing the review—that children “can benefit enormously from PSHE education”—it seems that the Government may at least pay lip service to its importance and its value. However, in considering how to proceed, I hope that the Government will make resources available to schools so that they can deliver whatever will be asked of them.
The national curriculum, for all its well rehearsed merits, has over time proved an irresistible temptation for Ministers to pursue their pet interests without always thinking through all the consequences for schools. The present Ministers seem to be no exception. I make the exception of my noble friend Lady Morris, who will be speaking later in the debate, who was an outstanding Schools Minister and an outstanding Secretary of State.
There are always compelling arguments for changing what is taught and how it is taught. Temptation is ever present for Ministers. Schools are now being told, for example, that they need to do better with basic numeracy and literacy; that they need to give young people a richer account of our national story; that they need to encourage greater take-up of foreign languages; that they need to stimulate more interest in maths and science; that they need to pay more attention to inculcating the soft skills that are increasingly important for employers; and that they must not overlook the importance of the humanities in producing well-rounded citizens.
Schools are being asked to deliver all this in the face of profound societal change which makes the task of teaching complex and demanding in a way that it was not a generation ago. Young people are exposed from an early age to an unprecedented amount of information and influences from a wide range of authorities. All this amplifies peer pressure in an unprecedented way.
This clearly creates new and demanding challenges for teachers. For example, the quickest way to secure a dramatic improvement in GCSE results would be to get boys to do as well as girls. However, there is a stubborn and intractable gender gap, with girls outperforming boys across the curriculum. This applies, to varying extents, across almost every social class, region and ethnic group. The precise reasons for this are unclear, but what is clear is that a significant cause must lie in societal change, which teachers are having to address on top of all the frequent and extensive changes that politicians demand of them.
Tackling these challenges might not be the problem it is for so many schools if sufficient resources of time and teachers were available, but they are not. Education, like everywhere in the public sector, is enduring tightening budgets which are not going to ease at any time soon.
Apart from budgetary pressures, there is the problem of trying to meet all these demands within an institutional framework which has changed too slowly to meet the new demands on it. The exam system, for example, is still based on the flawed premise that young people all mature, emotionally and intellectually, at the same rate, and so they are all due, more or less, to take exams at the same time. A system which allowed and encouraged young people to take exams as soon as they were ready to do so would create valuable flexibility which could help meet some of the challenges faced by schools.
Again, for all the waves of reforms launched by Minister after Minister to the curriculum, to the exam system and to school structures, far too little attention has been paid to methods of teaching. Schools still rely too much on the teacher acting as a sage on the stage even though new technologies and learning programmes could enable more flexible approaches, tailored more to the needs of individual students, with teachers acting more as a guide by the side. This is not to replace whole class teaching but to enrich it.
A longer school year would create more space for all the subjects that merit inclusion in the curriculum. It would allow more intensive teaching of core subjects; create the space to tackle the difficult transition between key stage 2 and key stage 3, where many pupils regress; and many parents would welcome shorter holidays. If we want improvement in educational outcomes, I can see no good reason against lengthening the school year, apart from resourcing it. Has the Minister’s department done any research into the returns from such an investment?
The Minister may well argue that the new freedoms the Government are giving to schools will enable them to meet these challenges—and so they may—but they can never be a complete solution. Our education system is one of the most important forces that bind us together as a nation. If the Government abdicate from their responsibilities to ensure an appropriate curriculum, an effective pedagogy with agreed outcomes and, crucially, adequate resources to deliver all this, the result will inevitably be uneven provision of varying quality—and those who are likely to suffer most from this uneven provision, whatever the pupil premium will deliver, are the most disadvantaged, those young people who have most need of a good education to get a better start in life. Such an abdication of responsibility by government can never be acceptable.
Schools can make an invaluable contribution to the well-being and personal and social needs of young people, but only if government enables them to do so. I hope the Minister can reassure us today that this Government will not walk away from their responsibilities to do so.